


A Foxhole Thing

by ghuune



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Anachronistic Language, Angst, Fluff, Frotting, M/M, Soldier!Cas, Soldier!Dean, World War One, destiel au, where did that fluff come from
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-16 18:59:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5837242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghuune/pseuds/ghuune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sergeant Dean Winchester and Private Cas Novak are trapped behind German enemy lines. Dean, traumatized by war and carrying heavy secrets, believes God has abandoned him, only to receive help from an unexpected quarter. WW1 AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Foxhole Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SaltyWords (agent4hire22)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent4hire22/gifts).



I. AUGUST 10th, 1916  
ON THE WESTERN BANK OF THE RIVER SOMME  
SOMEWHERE INSIDE GERMAN-HELD TERRITORY  
Sergeant Dean Winchester had to admit the new private, Cas Novak, had saved both their lives, finding this abandoned pillbox for them to hide in. Now their only problem was getting back to their own trenches. 

Easier said than done.

After the Germans' sortie into No Man's Land—successful for them, disastrous for Dean's squad—they'd dug out new front line trenches a quarter of a mile to the rear of Dean and Cas's current position, effectively trapping them behind their lines. 

They were probably gonna die, but that was not news, and hadn't been news since perhaps his second week on the front. He'd survived seven months with that knowledge, and it was in his bones now: You're gonna die, and you're gonna kill every man who follows you in the process. He just carried that weight.

Cas was a different story. He either didn't believe he was gonna die or he didn't give a shit, Dean wasn't sure which. He didn't know the guy, a reserve soldier brought up from the rear to replace Chuck, who'd gotten shot by a sniper after he'd lit a cigarette after dark. A rookie mistake. The stupid deaths hurt Dean the most.

Anyway, he'd met Private Novak approximately one hour before he took his squad of twelve over the top three days ago, and why he was the sole survivor of this clusterfuck of a mission was a big old question mark. Cas either had a solid case of shell-shock or an iron-clad deathwish, because he slipped and slid and crawled across No Man's Land as casually as taking a stroll to the latrine. Somehow, though, he was always in cover, always just to the side of the machine gun's line of fire, and where better, more cautious soldiers died bubbling blood and bad luck, he'd survived. He wore a cross around his neck, fingered it sometimes with his blue eyes shut, and while Dean loathed God and all His works, he had to admit, the religious hokum seemed to work for Cas. 

This pillbox was mercifully—and weirdly—clear of corpses, which meant it was also blessedly free from rats. Rats and corpses, rats eating corpses, rats fat off corpses, haunted Dean's nightmares; if he made it through this mess, he'd kill every rat he met in civilian life just on general principle. Well, he said “blessedly, mercifully,” but facts were, soon enough he was going to have to go try and butcher that horse, dead in a shell crater just outside the pillbox door. He stared at it, legs sticking up straight and stiff, and knew the minute he went for it, he'd be withered by machine gun fire. They'd had nothing but hardtack for three days now. He weighed the pros and cons.

He hoped that horse would at least serve as bait for the rats.

Behind him, Cas munched down the last of the rations, his lean face darkened with stubble. Dean ran his fingers over his jaw. It took him awhile to get scritchy, but a hint of sandpaper was just starting to come through. 

Even in the gloom of the pillbox, lit by what gray light made it through the gun slits cut into the walls, Cas's eyes were visibly blue, and visibly watching him. Dean found their steady regard disconcerting, like being watched by the eyes of a figure in a stained glass window. His eyes, and the steel cross he wore, and his general aura—like this was all nothing but theater, and he was nothing but a spectator, safe somewhere else—made him seem like someone from another world. Dean was torn between worrying over him as a headcase (the one thing you did not want behind you in No Man's Land was a rifle-toting headcase) and between thinking of him, with his stern, quiet calm, with something like awe. 

“I found food,” Cas said out of nowhere.

“What?” Dean was startled out of his thoughts. Ears burning, he realized he'd been doing that thing again. That thing he'd tried to stop doing once he figured out exactly how fucked up this mission was gonna be: that thing where he stared at Cas and thought about eyes and lips and jawline and neck and this and that and the other while shells shrieked and exploded like right fucking in front of him. In the grand scheme, it wasn't the worst thing—it hadn't gotten anyone killed, not like his decision to cut to the right instead of the left when that machine gunner got their range—but it was definitely not keeping his mind on war, and, oh yeah, it was also a sin.

Ever since his father beat him bloody after he'd caught him and Jimmy with their pants down behind the barn, he'd been nice and clear on that one. But his father's anger was based in God's command, and Dean was all out of humor with God these days. The God he gave a shit about would not have turned all of Europe into muddy fields and bloated corpses making grisly stew in impact craters. That God would not have let a hundred thousand soldiers die in just one day for just one miserable mile of ground. 

Cas's teeth flashed in the gloom. He had a beautiful smile. “Food,” he repeated, muffled by his mouthful of hardtack. He rapped the heel of his boot against the floor of the pillbox, producing a hollow sound. 

“A hidden cache,” Dean said, getting it. Some Jerry had been preparing to desert. That explained the food, and it also explained why there were no corpses in this pillbox. A pretty good plan, all things considered, except for the fact that the food was still here, which meant whoever had had enough was probably dead, executed for cowardice in the face of the enemy. Shooting deserters was the hot new craze. All the armies were doing it. 

He sighed. The thought of desertion was almost constant. A pillbox, stocked with food, was like the offer of a week's vacation. Part of him, a crazy part, momentarily dreamed of saying, “Hey, Cas, let's stay here until the food's almost gone, then start walking the wrong way, what do you say? How's your German?”

But no. There was a war to fight. He was a soldier. “Food, good,” he said, gruff. “Doesn't solve our problem.”

Cas smiled again. “It solves mine.”

“You had a problem?” Dean snorted. He raised the hatch and took a tin from the cache without looking at it; it turned out to be—sardines? Oh well, he was too hungry to argue. He settled down beside Cas, his hip and shoulder warm in the small space, and popped the lid of the tin. 

“Yes,” Cas said, a little laughter in his voice. “You, staring at that horse. Were you planning to eat it raw, Dean?”

“If I had to.”

“It would have sickened you. I can't allow that,” Cas said. He had a dark, hoarse voice. His diction struck Dean as bizarre, but then, he thought Cas might be a guv, private-school educated, a butler at home. Dean had never met one before, but he never asked if he were right or not. Asking about home was one of the many things you didn't do out here.

Cas passed him the canteen of water after he took a swig, and Dean felt the contact of his fingers shiver all the way up his arm to the pit of his stomach. His hand shook a little, but there was a chance Cas didn't notice. He put his lips where Cas's had been, swallowing water without tasting it, even though he wasn't thirsty and clean water was something to die for out here, where even the rain tasted like rotten eggs.

“Food improves our shot,” he said. “Let's pack what we can carry. Leave your rifle behind to make up for the weight; we'll move faster without them.”

It was a waste of materiel, but rifles were all but useless out in No Man's Land; mud clogged them up, and the muzzle flash gave away your position. Knives, and the long, narrow bayonet which was meant to be fixed to the end of the one's rifle, were the weapons of choice out in the wilderness. 

Dean explained to Cas that they'd have a pretty easy time of it until they came across the new German trenches. If they survived the hand-to-hand combat getting through those would entail, they had another mile of No Man's Land to traverse—a distance that might as well be one hundred. The contested land between two opposing trenches was a nightmare of knee deep mud, barbed wire, and rotting corpses, with constant flares sent up by both sides highlighting the slightest movement across the muck. Oh, and rats. Plenty of those. Dean would rather face machine guns.

It would be better to take their shot sooner rather than later. The German forces would be occupied consolidating their new trench lines: fresh trenches were oozing, collapsing disasters until they were shored up, and the soldiers would be exhausted and sickened by what they'd unearthed during the digging. Give them a couple of days, though, and German engineering would render those trenches impregnable. They had to move as soon as night fell.

“So get some sleep,” Dean said, wrapping up the briefing. “I'll keep watch.”

“Like Hell you will,” Cas said mildly, watching him with blue eyes that missed nothing, not the circles beneath his eyes nor the tremor in his hands. “You skipped your turn yesterday, trying to save Gabe. You're due. I'll keep first watch.”

“So you can not wake me up like the last time I trusted you? That's not gonna happen.”

Cas looked stubborn, even though the heavy bags beneath his eyes betrayed how badly he needed rest. “You can either sleep and let me keep watch, or you can stay awake and watch the crows with me, but I'm not sleeping until you do.”

“You disobeying a direct order?”

“Depends. Do you mean to shoot me for it?”

As more men had died in the squad, Cas had started giving his opinion, warning Dean of dangers. Not once had he used Dean's rank to address him, and Dean had been too tired, and, let's face it, too grateful to correct him. It hurt to be called “Sarge” when the men in your command were dying left and right. By the time it came down to just the two of them, the thought of addressing each other as “private” and “Sergeant” seemed as alien as the landscape they crawled across, cratered like the surface of the moon. 

So Dean sighed. “Of course not, idiot, but what do you want me to do?” He scrubbed his face with his hands. 

“You're so tired, you can't even think,” Cas said. “How's that going to help either of us get back home?”

When he was right, he was right. Dean said, “To hell with it, Cas, I'm tired of arguing. We're behind the lines and you're a human lucky rabbit's foot. Let's just sleep.”

Cas smiled and Dean smiled back, unable to help himself; it was wrong and he knew it, but that smile made him warm. “Exactly what I was about to suggest,” he said.

The pillbox was not large enough for the men to each have their own real estate, but they were soldiers, accustomed to sleeping in barracks or in craters or in ice-cold water up to their knees, and they thought nothing of arranging themselves practically on top of each other. Or, perhaps, Cas thought nothing of it; Dean thought about it a lot. Maybe it was the spectre of death, maybe it was the privacy, or maybe it was just that Dean was twenty four years old and sick of death, but the warmth and the weight of Cas's limbs along his made him grateful Cas was playing big spoon, or else he would have betrayed himself. Cas's breath wuffled the hairs on the nape of his neck, racking him with sweet, heavy pain.

Eventually, though, exhaustion won out over hormones. He'd been awake for over forty hours. As he drifted off to sleep, at last, he imagined Cas's hand, stroking his stomach, low on his belly, but that had to be just a dream.

II. AUGUST 11th, 1916  
DELVILLE WOOD  
Cas wriggled over the lip of the crater, his ass and strong thighs flexing beneath his fatigues, mud coating everything except the edge of his bayonet, which he held out in front of him. Dean followed, trying to focus.

There was more than enough light to see by, unfortunately, because the Germans were once again shelling the Allied lines. Mortars screamed up to the sooty sky, trailing yellow fire behind them, bright as flares. The boom-screech-crack and the vibration of the partially liquefied ground beneath Dean's belly was as familiar and soothing as a lullaby, while simultaneously wracking his last nerve. That, too, was familiar, and men could snap from shrieking frantic at the ceaseless racket to sleeping like children, and back again. The last waltz of the end of the world was set to this music.

Cas screamed something, inaudible over the wail of the shells and the staccato rattle of machine guns. Dean slithered to his side to put his ear to his mouth, and Cas bellowed, the veins standing out on his neck, “The Allies are returning fire! We need cover!”

“The trees!” Dean hollered back, with due appreciation of the irony. They were just crawling past the copse of trees on the rise they'd originally been sent to scout. High Command had hoped to place artillery there; now, Dean and Cas hoped the trees would soak High Command's artillery.

Cas's face beneath the cup of his helmet, streaked with mud and lit by fire. Even now, his eyes were too blue. He nodded confirmation and, a set expression on his face, changed course to lead the way to the wood.

The corpses of five of Dean's friends rested, mangled, somewhere in there. Rich was in pieces all across it; he'd taken a shell square to the gut. Dean shoved these thoughts from his mind as he followed Cas.

The wood: a year ago, it would have been a pretty little place, green with leaves, good hunting there, maybe a brook running through it; now, it was nothing but broken trunks and mud. Instead of the smell of good earth and green, growing things, there was acrid, greasy smoke and corruption, which was the stench of No Man's Land, wafting across to where they hid in the cavity of an uproated tree, curled around each other.

The mortar bombardment came closer as the Allies corrected their range, seeking the fresh-dug trenches of the German front lines. It was a good strategy. Ordinarily, Dean would approve. But his life was hanging by a thread and his blood was pounding in his ears and every nerve was frayed by the constant pounding.

A shell exploded seemingly right on top of them, splinters of wood and chunks of mud spattering hard enough to bruise. He clutched at Cas, startled, but also because his mind simultaneously replayed the silent movie of Rich exploding, intestines spiralling out, sudden, Rich's final expression one of blank surprise.

Cas turned his head. The corner of his shapely mouth quirked up in a small smile, calm, meant to comfort, and Dean, close to screaming, needed nothing more. So he didn't think. He grabbed him, crashed his lips against his, not caring about the cross which swayed out and clinked against the buckle of his pack. He expected to be struck—maybe even wanted to be struck. He'd gotten ten men killed in the past four days and he couldn't let go of it. 

What he didn't expect was for Cas, a good Christian, he'd assumed, what with all the praying and the cross, to open his mouth and hungrily accept his tongue. 

Well, it was the end of the world. Even choir boys grabbed what they could.

Too loud to think, to stop and breathe and consider the consequences. They were going to die; the Allied guns had the German's range now, which was also their range, because “range” for mortars meant “plus or minus a eighth of a mile,” and they were well within that. God knows the Allies had shelled the shit out of Dean before while trying to work out their math, those times he was caught out in the middle of wet and stinking Hell and had to desperately double back to the trenches as the guns opened up, holding his helmet to his head, legs and heart pumping mad. Men's lives meant nothing until they were followed by more than four zeroes; then the generals reconsidered their strategies, but not a moment before.

So when Cas responded, Dean didn't hesitate. He thrust inside his mouth, wet heat, masculine flavor, a taste he hadn't allowed himself in years. Cas's jaw beneath his hard palm, working open, making space for him, a mental image that had him moaning into Cas's mouth, his young beard rasping against his lips. 

Cas's hand on him, stroking him through the filthy fatigues, wet-caked with mud, and the sick leap of his blood rushing to hardness in excitement that was also half-terror. There was a fly so a soldier could piss without stripping, a dainty consideration, but a necessary one given that the field kit weighed approximately fifty pounds, and for a moment of anticipatory fear that flashed hot-cold up his spine, Dean wondered if Cas was going to go for it—if they were going to rut in the middle of Hell like a pair of demons celebrating. But no. Just Cas's palm, heavy on him, working him through the fabric, his fingertips reading the fly but not poking through it. 

“Why?” he tore away to ask in an unvoiced gasp of air, not knowing that he did, but Cas replied anyway.

“Because you need it.” Dean had to read his lips, the noise was so incredible both in and outside his head. 

“Because I need it,” Cas said, the barest thread of desperation finally appearing inside that deep, gravelly voice, and that time Dean heard him, because Cas rose his head to take his mouth again, his tongue twining with Dean's. 

Dean shifted his body so he covered Cas, trapping his hand between their pelvises, the hot press of Cas's own answering hard-on making his head spin. Cas thrust up against him, meeting his rhythm as he sought more sensation, a quicker resolution. 

This was impossible. The only explanation was he'd finally cracked. He'd come to once the drugs began to work to see a tired, done-with-it-all doctor and a shocked nurse staring bug-eyed at his crotch, obviously. So if this was all delusion, if he was finally stark staring mad, why not run with it? This was, in fact, the only beauty he'd had in seven months of agony.

Cas struggled beneath him, which broke his fantasy; back to reality, boy, you're going to snuff it, and this altar boy you were just corrupting is about to beat the piss out of you. But, again, no. It was just Cas undoing the buckles of his pack, shrugging out of it, his eyes a blue blaze against the hot yellow lines tracing the night sky. Smoke boiled along the horizon, lit orange. A nearby tree caught on fire, its light licking over Cas's skin, orange and yellow, the way Dean wanted to lick it.

Dean felt his teeth bare, his lips curled back as arousal almost flash-boiled over into rage. The bombardment continued, but it was nothing against the heavy pounding of his blood. This was going to get dangerous in a hurry. It was too strong, too much; his brain couldn't decide whether to focus on survival or on sex. He could just as easily wind up killing Cas as loving him. 

The thought sobered him.

Cas maybe read this in his face—he wouldn't be surprised, Cas was batting a thousand at reading him thus far—because he cupped his face in his palms. As yet another tree met its maker with an earth-shattering roar of fire close by, Cas gave him a gentle kiss, just the tip of his tongue tasting Dean's lower lip. Dean reached between his legs, desperate to feel his pulse against his palm, the brag of his life. He needed Cas to live, more than anything; he wasn't interested in getting back home if it meant Cas would die like Rich had died, or Chuck, or Gabe, or any of his other friends, bloating green and noxious, sinking into mud. Not Cas! It couldn't happen. He wouldn't allow it. He couldn't bear it. 

Cas arched, pressed hard against his hand, his lashes drooping over his eyes, and Dean deepened the kiss, needing his flavor the way he needed clean water. Cas's hand returned to his cock, and Dean raised his thigh, brought Cas into the cradle of his pelvis, and resumed the brisk thrusting motion that would fix them both, complete this thing, his erection sliding hard and hot along Cas's, muffled by fabric that might as well not even be there.

Cas broke the kiss to stare at him, hot-eyed, wild, and that... that expression, Cas's calm composure, which had held steady as men bled out and spilled their guts, cut in half by bullets spit at a hundred rounds a minute, that expression breaking just because he wanted him, finished it for him. With a flowering leap of pleasure so intense it was almost pain, Dean spent inside his fatigues, the orgasm a pumping rush, even as his brain, which hated him, mated it with the sound of machine guns, rat-a-tat-a-tat.

Cas pressed his forehead against his shoulder and, gasping, spent as well, his cock spasming, wetness palpable through the coarse fabric of his fatigues, his mouth ajar with wonder and maybe, just a little, dawning fear.

III. AUGUST 12th, 1916  
They hadn't talked about it, because minor considerations like “not dying” had taken precedence, but Cas found excuses to touch him—his shoulder, his hand, his lower back as they crawled towards the German trenches. It was reassuring. Dean hated that he needed reassurance, but he did. He craved it. Every time Cas touched him, it was as though he solemnly took his face in his hands and said, “Me, too. I feel this, too.”

Dean was terrified. Exhilirated. But mostly terrified. He had never been in love before, but he was pretty sure he was in it now.

In love, and in No Man's Land. This was not good.

If they made it through the German trenches, they had a mile to go across the most disgusting terrain God's diseased mind could devise, with German machine gunners and snipers and a thousand starving infantrymen with rifles behind them, and the Allies with their itchy trigger fingers and poor aim in front, and in the middle, barbed wire, sinkholes of muck that could swallow a man in an instant, and corpses so ripe their contents strained against transparent skin, ready to blast slick, slimy corruption on the unwary crawler. In short, there were still ninety nine ways to die before they were home free.

But first, these German trenches.

The bombardment was over; either the Allies had given up, or, Dean dared to hope, they'd accomplished their objective. The trenches were in sight, and Dean grabbed Cas's shoulder. He said into his ear, “If the trenches are collapsed, run like hell. If they aren't, stay by me, we're going to wait and see if we can sneak across. Got it?”

Cas nodded. Then he snatched a quick kiss, his lips tasting of salt and sweat, that had Dean blushing until his ears felt like they were on fire. “And don't do that.”

“We're not safe yet, Dean,” Cas said. “What if I don't get another chance?”

“Don't say that, either,” Dean said, because he wasn't wrong, and that thought was in his head, too. His fatigues were filthy, his skin itched, he smelled like death, and all those things were also true of Cas, but if it weren't for the threat of Jerry, he would still be down. That was just the truth.

“We'll make it,” Cas said then, flat and determined, and Dean grunted quietly. 

“Let's do this,” he said.

Dean wished he had a pair of binoculars. The thing about trenches? They were dug into the ground. Not an easy feat in ground like this, shelled to soupy muck, but soldiers on both sides managed it. So many sandbags. Anyway, it wasn't easy to tell whether they'd collapsed or not, and the soldiers—the smart ones, anyway, the survivors—quickly learned to keep their heads beneath the lip. Occasionally one would pop his head up, careless or curious, but you couldn't count on that. The wind was wrong to catch the sound of voices or the scent of tobacco smoke, which would have been another clue.

Dean was willing to bet the trenches were just fine. Mortar fire only seemed to work when it was the enemy shelling your own position; it never seemed to work the other way around.

They crept forward on their stomachs, taking cover in old craters when they could, otherwise trusting their liberal coating of mud would serve as camouflage. 

They were almost on the point of slithering over the lip of the trench when they, at last, heard low voices speaking barbed-wire German, and fuck. Of course Dean had to be right. He hated being right. 

They exchanged glances, Cas's eyes catching on his like a cat's claws on fabric. The calm composure he'd so relied on was no longer there. Now Cas looked human. He looked scared. His vulnerability lanced through him, and once again he felt the surge of protectiveness—Cas must not die, not matter what. Dean mimed pressing himself flatter to the earth, and Cas followed suit.

The eastern sky was turning pastel colors, and that was both good and bad. It was good because the watch would change soon, the night soldiers coming off the firestep as the day soldiers came on; it was bad because dawn heralded the tradition both sides observed, the “seven minutes' hate,” where soldiers on each side fired blind, hoping to catch someone made careless by fatigue. While it would be best to take the trench during the changing of the guard, no one in his right mind wanted to be caught in the crossfire of the seven minutes' hate.

Dean extended his bayonet and Cas did the same. German voices rose in greeting and complaint—bitching sounded the same no matter what language it was in—and footsteps shuffled as the men exchanged places. With one strong jerk of his arms, Dean pulled himself over the lip of the trench, tumbling into a knot of German soldiers, confused and surprised by his sudden appearance.

He set to work.

If he were being honest about his talents in life, killing would be in the top five, maybe even the top three. Whatever. He was good at it. He stabbed and sliced with the bayonet, spinning to kick a soldier coming up behind him, sending him flying to meet Cas, who grabbed his chin and exposed his throat and cut him as though he were a lamb. Cas took no pleasure in it, and Dean tried not to, but he failed at that. After all the emotions of the past few days, the terror of the shelling and watching his friends die in pieces and gore, he took the killing as personal business, and part of him—a large, demonic part, the part that had divorced God a long time ago—was made happy by the wash of blood over his hands, the victory of it all. The vengeance.

“Dean!”

Cas's rough voice jerked him out of a fugue state he'd entered as he plunged his bayonet into a soldier's stomach, a harsh jerk of sound as though Cas had been taken by surprise, and had he taken his eyes off him? He had, God damn him, he had. He spun to see Cas pressed against the trench's oozing wall, eyes rolling with exertion as he fought against two soldiers, one of whom had a bayonet of his own which was all too close to Cas's long throat.

And no. 

Dean screamed, “Cas!” and threw himself into that fray without a plan, knowing only that he needed to save him, the only surviving member of his squad, the most important man. He didn't care if that bayonet found its way into his own guts if his death meant Cas would walk away from this. He couldn't be the one who led Cas to his death—he couldn't. Nothing else mattered.

When he came back to himself, there were two dead soldiers at his feet that he didn't want to look at too closely. His arms were painted with blood and there was a coppery taste in his mouth. He spat to clear it, and the spit was red.

“You hurt?” he asked.

Cas shook his head, his eyes wide, face pale as he stared at him. “You?”

“I don't think so,” Dean said. “Gimme a minute,” he added, because Cas had drawn close, wanted to see for himself that he was all right, and there was still too much adrenaline humming in his wires. He wasn't sure he was entirely safe.

“Dean, we need to get out of here,” Cas said. “That wasn't quiet. More will come.”

“You first,” Dean said. Cas rolled his eyes at him and swung his shoulders, his body language stating that he meant to argue. Dean was having none of it, so he grabbed him around the waist and boosted him up over the firestep. Cas had no choice but to grab the lip of the trench, chin himself, and scrabble over. Dean watched him do that, the play of his shoulders and back muscles beneath his fatigues, and then followed suit, rolling out of the German trench and into No Man's Land.

IV. AUGUST 12th, 1916  
NO MAN'S LAND  
Stuck traversing No Man's Land? Here's a hint: don't do it in broad daylight in August.

The stench rising from the craters was enough to turn Dean's stomach, and even Cas looked green. Soldiers on both sides caught their movement and took pot shots at them, sending them rolling into cover, invariably festooned with the insides of some other unlucky bastard who'd gotten stuck in this very same predicament. The machine guns hadn't opened up yet, perhaps because two soldiers obviously trying to get back home weren't good enough targets to waste thousands of rounds on, but more likely because the machine gunners were arrogant fuckers who liked to have their coffee and a smoke before they manned their finicky weapons. Snipers didn't have to worry about ammo feeds and blazing hot cylinders, so solitary bullets occasionally pinged and wonged off the ground inches from their faces. 

The only reason they weren't dead yet was because they were so utterly flithy the rats had found them. Rats were even better targets than soldiers; everybody hated rats, whereas both sides had an understanding that soldiers on the opposing team were in the same mess they were in, and just doing their jobs. Regardless, the swarming rats popped and exploded around the two of them, tanking hits better than tanks themselves did. 

Dean added rat blood to the list of reasons he loathed them.

All told, this wasn't so bad. He'd take it over mortar bombardment, anyway. The sun rose, the stench increased, and Cas passed him the water bottle as they took cover in yet another crater. There was a dead man sharing their lodgings, half his face missing, his stomach and hands bulging with gas. 

The water tasted like rotted flesh, but that could also just be the smell from their flatmate. He swallowed some, then swished a mouthful and spit.

“What do you want most right now?” Cas asked him.

Crows cawed cheerfully. This war was great for the crows. Those sons of bitches were happy as hell.

“A fifth of whiskey and a hot bath.”

Cas groaned in longing. “Water up to my chin.”

“Soap. Fancy soap. The kind that suds.”

“Shampoo,” Cas said mournfully, yanking at a chunk of something stuck in his hair. “I don't want to know what that was,” he said, just as Dean was about to tell him. 

It was part of a molar. It stuck in the flaking mud wall of the crater when Cas flicked it away in disgust. 

“Toothpaste,” he said, inspired. “So I can kiss you.”

Cas stared into him, his expression softening. “Same,” he said. “We have to survive this first, though.” 

Dean's heart rocketed up into his mouth as Cas popped his head over the lip of the crater. “What are you doing?” he hissed, yanking him back down.

“I was just checking for the sun flash off the scope,” Cas said, calm. “That sniper has to take a leak some time.”

Dean gripped his hand hard. Don't do that again, his grip said. Aloud, he said, “I think we should wait here until nightfall.”

“That would be smart,” Cas said. “I'm not feeling very smart right now, though. Dean, I want to go home.”

“Where is home for you?” Dean asked, the question meant to distract him. Cas had that wall-eyed look that preceded some dumbass, stressed-out decision, like charging out of cover and running hell-for-leather in the wrong direction. He opened up his pack and took out two cans of food, not checking to see what they were, because it didn't matter. Everything was going to taste like shit until they got out of this reeking Hell. 

Cas accepted the tin and opened it and began to eat without interest. “High up,” he said at last, long after Dean thought he'd forgotten the question. “Where the air is clean and cold.”

“Sounds nice,” Dean said, even though that was no answer at all. He'd expected a name, London, perhaps. “I live in the country. Aubrey-on-Cray—that's the name of the village. My dad left me a farm. My little brother's looking after it. Sam. Sammy's his name.”

“Your brother Sam?” Cas blinked. “You never mentioned him.”

“Yeah, well, I need him to be apart from all this,” Dean said. “He's a big guy. Would've made a good soldier, but I—I took care of that.” He looked down and to the side, avoiding Cas's eyes, because this was his biggest secret, except for the one Cas already knew. 

“You hurt him,” Cas said. Dean's gaze flashed up to meet his steady stare, looking for blame, for judgment. To deprive a man of the right to fight for his country—that was a great sin, a giant “fuck you” not just to the Queen and the war she'd entered for the sake of the world, but to God and the very heart of masculinity itself. And yet, there was none of that in Cas's eyes, just blue light, the color of the sky no one saw here in No Man's Land, obscured as it was by smoke and the fog of death. 

Cas said, slow, “He must mean a great deal to you.”

“I put paid to that with my typical speed.” The old despair rushed into his throat and choked him. He looked away from Cas's eyes again, unable to accept their warmth. “Won't be going home again after this.”

“You think he won't forgive you?” Cas's eyes narrowed, and his expression darkened like a cloud being drawn over the sun. He forced Dean to look at him, long, gentle fingers beneath his chin, his face close and his eyes serious as he said, “No. Worse. You think you don't deserve to be forgiven.”

“I crippled him! In what world does that get forgiven?”

“In this one.” With a small motion, Cas encompassed the crater they hid in, the dead man slumped against the far wall like a witness. “You saved him from this.” He frowned, serious, solemn. “I'd forgive you, if it were me.”

“If you really mean that, then gimme your foot when we get back to the trenches, and I'll shoot your toes off.”

Dean meant it, too. They'd get maybe a month of stress leave if they made it through this, then it would be back to the front for the two of them. If High Command caught wind of what they were to each other, you could bet your battle boots they'd be put in separate companies, and one or the other of them would be sent into a shitshow intended to finish them off. They weren't out of the woods with each other, not a long ways yet. So yeah, if Cas was game, he'd shoot him in the foot. You best believe it.

Cas shook his head, stern, angry with him now, and he said, “If you did that, I couldn't fight to save you... and I need to do that now, Dean. You need to understand that.”

“But maybe my brother needed that, too,” Dean said, staring down into the mud, his voice flat.

“He saves you in other ways.” Cas was definite, the kind of certainty in his voice Dean would kill to possess. “I'll go back there with you when this is all over, if you want me. I'll stand with you while you explain what this was, why he shouldn't have had to face it. This... total waste.”

Dean's mouth contorted as he fought to control himself. He couldn't start crying now. “I want you,” he said, his voice harsh with suppressed tears. 

“I know,” Cas said, the calm certainty back in his eyes, so that Dean knew for a fact that he did.

V. AUGUST 13th, 1916  
NO MAN'S LAND  
As the sunset blazed rose and purple overhead, Cas laid his hand on his jaw and, with the gentlest of pressures, turned his face towards him. 

“You asked me where home is,” he said, staring into his eyes.

Dean made an affirmative sound, but he didn't really care anymore, because Cas's mouth was so close to his, he could taste his breath. Intellectually, he knew they were both filthy and crusted with the unthinkable, but the stench of the place they were was so intense that any human smell, any living smell, was Heaven in comparison. Cas stank, the same as he did, of stress and sweat and blood, but those were human smells produced by a living creature, and life was what Dean craved. His blood beat heavy in his stomach, his wrists, the sides of his neck, his rapidly-hardening cock, at the feel of Cas's breath washing over his lips.

“Unnnh, Cas, God,” he groaned.

“That's what I'm trying to tell you,” Cas said, closer now so his lips vibrated against Dean's. “Listen, will you?”

Dean did not want to listen. His palm curved over Cas's inner thigh, Cas's hard-on hot against the edge of his hand. All he had to do was turn his wrist and—

“Look at that,” Cas said, tilting his face up to the sunset.

Clouds stacked on the horizon, lit by the dying sun instead of by rockets. A single star glowed low on the horizon.

“I come from there,” Cas said. 

“What, the west?” Dean asked, stupid, dazed, almost one hundred percent of his attention centered around his dick, which was as hard as it had ever been before. Dead guy in the crater, war be damned. Cas had those eyelids, whatchacallim, epicanthic folds, the kind that come with Native Americans, Russians; Dean had met a few different nationalities serving in different units in his time here. It was a World War, after all. But Cas didn't have a foreign accent; he certainly wasn't American, and thank God for that, because Dean hated those self-important assholes. 

He reminded himself that part of etiquette was giving a shit when the object of your desire was talking. Desire, hell. Love. He loved this man. So after a stern self-talking-to, he got his shit together and focused.

“Okay, okay, I'm here. You were trying to tell me something. I'm listening.”

“I come from there,” Cas said again, holding his face steady so his eyes watered against the bright colors streaking across the horizon. “Those clouds,” Cas said patiently. “Those colors. Heaven, Dean, are you deaf?”

Dean snorted. “You come from Heaven.”

“That's what I'm trying to tell you.”

“Buddy,” Dean said, laughing, “I got a high opinion of you, but damn. That's going a little too far.”

Cas chuckled low in his throat, a sound that made Dean twitch in his fatigues, and kissed him then. 

They completely missed the sunset.  
-  
After night fell, as thick as velvet, they exited their crater and crept across the blighted ground, almost home.

Flares went up, limned them with white light and black shadow, sending them ducking down to the ground, but in between the lights, they were able to run, heads tucked, legs pumping, covering the distance better than Dean had expected.

He began to hope they would survive this. That he would have his whole life with this man, whom he found as if by miracle. So what if he thought he came from Heaven? So he was a little crazy. Dean wouldn't exactly call himself sane.

That was before the machine gunner found them.  
-  
There was nothing but pain, and then there was nothing but light. 

Dean had always known how it would feel when at last he finally got to die. He'd lived it in his dreams. Pain, then light, then warmth. He'd looked forward to it. It always seemed so loving, as though there were something on the other side holding out its hand, looking for him, waiting for him. Then there was the warmth, a heat like the sun if the sun were an emotion and that emotion was loving him; he was enveloped, every cell of him seen, analyzed, understood, appreciated. Assembled, and then the whole evaluated, appreciated, accepted. 

Dean understood, at last, that he was the creation that had been intended from the first. He was perfect. He was loved.  
-  
He gasped and coughed. 

Cas had his head in his hands, cradling the back of his neck, eyes intense, so black only a thin rim of blue remained. His mouth ajar, a flash of teeth, such acute pain in his eyes that Dean reached for him instinctively. He never wanted Cas to feel such pain.

“Dean!”

Sharp agony shot down the center of his body, following the pulse of blood from his heart. Though it was the worse pain he'd ever felt, it only lasted an instant. He had the impression that it was his soul, settling back into his body, aligning with the organizing principle of his life's energy, the rhythm of his cells that had been set from the very first flicker of life in his body.

“Cas?” he asked.

“Fuck,” Cas cursed, and in a profession where cursing happened like breathing, that was the first time Dean had ever heard him utter an expletive. “Dean. God. Dean.”

Cas's mouth crashed into his with a force that cut the flesh of his lips against his teeth, and Cas breathed into him, breathed out, as though trying to revive him. 

“Cas, what the hell?” Dean tore his mouth away from his.

His fatigues were wet. Why? Dean's hands fluttered over the front of his fatigues, by no means fresh after a week out in No Man's Land, but they'd been dry a moment ago. Not now. Now, they were soaked with blood. 

“Whose is this?” he asked, his stomach dropping; he kinda thought he already knew the answer.

“That's yours,” Cas said, wild, pale; “Dean, I told you where I come from. God. Dean.”

Cas laid his full weight on top of him, his voice chanting his name in his ear, as though Dean needed to hear it, needed to be reminded, needed to be named. Cas's erection was hot and hard against his stomach, and Dean's blood shot down to his stomach in response, but the lust, which he'd grown to expect as a reasonable response to Cas's closeness, was absent. Instead he felt warmth, that same warmth and light that had called him back from the pain, that sense of absence.

Deep down inside he understood what had happened to him, though his brain was slow to catch up.

“You?” he asked.

Cas was still inconsolable, drinking kisses from his mouth like he needed Dean to breathe for him, but at last he broke free long enough to reply, “Yes. Me.”

VI. SEPTEMBER 10th, 1916  
AUBREY-ON-CRAY  
Dean threw his bags off the back of the wagon and raised his voice to let the wagonneer know he was clear. “Thanks for the ride,” he called.

Cas thumped down beside him, his rucksack bouncing off his shoulder. Cas had the fewest possessions of any soldier he'd ever met, and soldiers as a class of human beings tended to travel light. Dean hefted his two duffels up onto his shoulders. When the wagon passed out of sight over the hill, he dropped them again, hauled Cas against him, kissed him deeply. 

At last he broke away, smiled and said, “You smell that?”

“Manure,” Cas said. He grimaced. Not enchanted.

“Fertile land!” Dean crowed, and he picked the duffels up again. “You'll get used to it. You better,” he added, “because planting season is coming.”

“We'll be back at the front by then.” Cas glared at the weeds growing wild in the ditches on either side of the road, thin green fronds bending in the light breeze, as though he would like to set it all on fire. 

“How can you hate this?” Dean was almost hurt. “This should be right up your alley. Aren't angels all about gardening?”

“Yes, because that turned out so well. I think I'd rather cook,” Cas grumbled. 

Dean raised his eyebrows and tipped his head. “I can get behind that, maybe. How do you feel about housework?”


End file.
